4 Strategies to Drastically Improve Your Content Marketing

by Ray Slater Barry

Now then, we all know that content marketing is King, Queen and everything in between. With 70% of marketers actively investing in content marketing in 2020, people are no longer getting scrappy with their content creation efforts, they’re investing in them.

What we also know is that it’s a tough crowd out there and I’m sure we’ve all seen some great content fall on deaf ears over the years. Cries from the marketing team: “But why? It was so good! It had all of the hooks” still haunt the best of us.

There are a lot of reasons that content can fall flat. Perhaps you’re not talking to the right audience, or even reaching the right audience in the first place? In fact, personalized marketing efforts are on the rise. It’s not a one size fits all kind of deal anymore. Marketers are creating content for at least three audience segments in 2020.

So if you’re creating personalized content but it’s still falling flat what else can you look at? Maybe your timing was off or your social media scheduler didn’t pull the post image you wanted? Why why why?

The truth is, one of the biggest reasons that content is a flop is because it’s not engaging.

This article will guide you through four engaging content strategies to make sure the message you want to be heard is not only heard but reciprocated, shared and engaged with in 2020.

Give your content the best opportunity it deserves and consider creating these four types of engaging content to drastically improve your content marketing efforts.

4 Content Marketing Strategies to Rock your World

Gamification

Gamification doesn’t need to be a digital game as we know it. It’s more about gamifying someone’s experience so that they have a more playful and therefore enjoyable interaction with your brand.

Gamification works really well for customer retention. If you’re looking to get someone to use your product over an extended period of time then gamifying the in-app or product use experience does this very well.

By introducing badges, points and rewards, levels and leaderboards. You can bring a competitive nature to your product that people cannot help but participate in.

How does this translate into top of funnel, content marketing tactics? There are a lot of ways you can gamify your content strategy.

Create Quizzes

Quizzes are a sure-fire way of getting your content seen, heard and engaged with. They generate that competitive nature to your content that drives people to not only start the quiz but finish it.

By implementing quizzes into your content strategy you’re able to educate someone on your brand and product and at the same time, give them a joyful experience. Plus, they’re more likely to share their quiz results and your brand than other more common content marketing strategies.

Quizzes can also be a great way for you to collect lead data. If you’re looking to do more than brand awareness with your content marketing then quizzes give the opportunity to collect an email, name and even product preference depending on the questions you ask.
You can enhance your content marketing plan by following up on your quiz with an email. Use the email to share quiz results and personalized product suggestions.

Dance Challenge

If brand awareness is what you’re going for then gamifying your awareness efforts can be a great way to expand your reach. These challenges are often very channel and audience-specific, so this tactic is only if your demographic falls into these audience segments.

With 800 million active users worldwide and 41% of them being between ages 16-24 you’ll need to get your content strategy speaking to the younger demographic.

The average engagement rate on TikTok, per post, is 29%. Compared to just 3.2% on Facebook. That’s a staggering 25.8% higher engagement rate than what’s supposed to be the industry leader. Yet, only 4% of US marketers use the platform.

If you’re looking to capitalize on TikTok with your content marketing efforts then create a video challenge that has the potential to go viral and talks to TikTok’s user base.

Interactive games

If you really want to step up your user engagement then consider creating a more immersive experience with a brand-led game. Much like Twitch did here, their game reached a whopping 1.5 million streams with 15k+ returning gamers. Twitch not only provided an opportunity to give someone a positive brand experience but they maximized the reach of that experience in the first place.

New Tech

Technology is evolving rapidly and brands are often being applauded for how they incorporate it into their marketing strategy. More and more emerging technology focuses on new ways to interact and engage.

Your content marketing strategy can benefit from these technologies if you’re willing to invest the time and the talent to bring your product to life with them.

The Growth of AR and VR

Augmented and Virtual reality really took off in 2018 with the launch of brand custom filters. They are only set to grow in popularity in the coming years. It’s up to you to incorporate their capabilities in the content that you create. Plus, with Facebook’s Spark AR study launched in August 2019, it’s never been easier for brands, no matter what size, to create their own filters for social media.

Virtual tours

Someone should be able to explore your product through your content marketing, not be sold it. Virtual tours are a great way of doing this. Think of ways you can show someone around your product and show your brand personality on the journey they take. Leave “easter eggs,” tell stories, and let your product sing through an interactive experience.

Voice search

Three-quarters of US households alone are expected to own at least one smart speaker this year. With 51% of those owners using voice search assistance to research products, you’ll need to be optimizing your SEO content marketing efforts for in-home voice search.

Level this up by creating a Google Action or Alexa Skill for your brand to enable your fans to interact with you more intimately, within their own home. It’s a new form of content marketing but one that’s only predicted to rise in the future.

Podcasting

Much like Tiktok, podcasts are still a relatively untapped market for brands and can be a fantastic way to drastically improve your content marketing strategy. While there are around 80 million Facebook business pages there are only around 700k podcasts airing. That’s a lot of airspace for your brand, and with 90 million listeners worldwide, there’s no shortage of ears.

Find a content category that suits your product, relate your podcast to your mission and vision and look to convert your best-performing blog posts to start yourself off on the right foot.

A podcast is one of the few content types that you don’t need to vie for attention with. You’re not interrupting someone’s day with a podcast. By playing your podcast someone has chosen to dedicate their time to listen to what you have to say.

Podcast content is a fantastic way for you to demonstrate brand thought-leadership, reach new audiences through hosting guests and so much more.

Conversational Content

Conversational marketing is a method of genuinely engaging with people via various routes. Rather than selling your product or promoting your brand via a one-way street, conversational marketing opens up the avenue for a return in the conversation as well.
This gives someone a more memorable brand experience and is a chance for you to change the content you deliver, depending on the response someone gives. Overall, this makes a brand experience most personalized, engaging and ultimately converting.

Go Live

Live streaming is a fantastic way to bring your content into the now. Few brands are capitalizing on the perks of going live on social media channels. If your timing is right you have the opportunity to reach the majority of your followers, especially on Instagram as the platform currently bumps you to the front of people’s stories.

Chat functions alongside live streams enable your brand to respond to your followers in real-time and to understand what their worries, questions or needs may be.

Use Messenger Bots

Not only is the bot a content form in itself it’s also a way for you to show brand voice and give someone a positive brand experience.

Messenger bots are also a portal into the rest of your content. A good messenger bot has the power to direct visitors to other pieces of content that could be useful for them, ensuring the rest of your content gets the exposure it deserves.

Use your messenger bot to dictate the content you create in the future. Note down if you see a rise in queries about a particular subject and let that guide your next content block focus.

Try Webinars & Digital Meetups

This type of content can be framed however you think will best resonate with your demographic but is most often educational.

Whether you want to create an online festival, a Q&A webinar or a product demo… The choice is yours.

Make sure you’ve done enough testing beforehand for the event to run as smoothly as possible, promote it across all platforms and make the event exclusive to those that sign up. It makes the content experience valuable, engaging and insightful for your visitors.

I hope you’ve found this article useful and are able to identify a few areas within your own content marketing that you can work on. What you do is unique to your brand but how you do it can be what sends your content viral or what sees it flop.

Let’s shoot for option A.

Ray Slater Berry has been working in social media and content marketing for eight years. He specializes in the tech, innovation and travel sectors. He is a writer for Typeform and has recently published his first work of fiction, Golden Boy.